Tag Archives: contracts

When you are operating a business, cost control is essential. It’s important to keep a detailed record of all the costs going in and out. Usually, payments are tied to invoices. You send customers invoices and your contractors and suppliers send you invoices. Sometimes, these invoices are part of previously negotiated business law contacts.

Some business relationships are better than others. If you work with an unethical contractor or supplier, they may break the terms of the contract or simply start billing you for costs that you didn’t incur. It’s important to have an accountant or other dedicated employee that keeps track of expenses and invoices so that bogus invoices can be quickly detected. It’s common for bogus invoices to go undetected when a company doesn’t have a strict system in place to keep tract of accounts payable and accounts receivable. Simply implementing this system will save you a great deal of money.

If you find one, keep in mind, it may be a mistake. Try contacting the company to see if they unintentionally sent you the invoice. If so, the problem is easy to correct. However, if the company insists the charges must be paid, you may have entered a business law contract dispute situation.

If the company takes legal action to insist that you pay the bogus charges, you may need to consult with a business law attorney, especially if the charges are large. You may end up in a contract dispute which could lead to court action. Hopefully, though, if you have a good attorney, you can settle the matter quickly.

There are cases of actual fraud when unscrupulous companies send bogus invoices to companies. The invoices look real but they are actually for goods and services that you’ve never ordered. In other cases, they are real invoices but false charges have been added. Why are these scams popular? They are popular because many companies don’t check invoices closely enough. They assume that all invoices are real and pay them without further investigation. This is another reason that it’s important to have a dedicated accounts person at your business. This is the best way to prevent this type of fraud.